Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Aaron Kashtan
UWRT 1102
7 May 2017
Before I took this class this semester, I had never thought about what makes up American
identity. However, as I wrote my first artifact, I decided that a person doesnt have to be
American, but he or she has to have lived in the United States and that he or she must speak
English. Over the course of the next five artifacts, I basically kept the same opinion of American
identity, but I started to think of identity in a bigger sense. I found that many things have
determined our countrys identity, including religion, wars, race, and other historical events.
Im not sure how I developed as a writer over the course of writing these artifacts,
because I wasnt thinking about American identity on the last two abstracts, to be honest. I did
see, however, after I wrote them how they fit in with American identity. Also, to be honest, I
dont think I got better as a writer as it went on. In other words, I think I did better on some of
Overall, the collection of abstracts shows the many things that make up American
identity. The first abstract is about me and my childhood up until now. As I say in that paper, I
was born in Japan, but I think of myself as an American because I have lived here most of my
life. In the second abstract, I expanded some to show that religion also has played a part in
American identity. We have many different people with different religions, including
Christianity, Mormonism, and Scientology. With the third abstract, I showed that events in our
history affect our American identity. I asked the question which war affected us more, World War
I or World War II. In the fourth abstract, I show how education affects our American identity. I
compared public schools and private schools, and tried to figure out which one was better. The
fifth abstract also shows how events help shape our American identity. It has to do with child
labor laws during the Industrial Revolution. The last abstract is an email I sent to a grocery store
manager looking for a summer job. This shows that young people looking for summer jobs is
All these together describe American identity. I started with our identity as people that
have lived here for a while and speak English. Through writing this portfolio, I realized that our